


Refracted Light

by elfinmouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childbirth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfinmouse/pseuds/elfinmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Most infants find the act of being born unpleasant"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refracted Light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for mangacrack's prompt on the livejournal comm, commentfic on January 3rd, 2013.

Castiel rolled his shoulder and twisted into a more comfortable position. A knee jabbed into his stomach and the soul beside him fluttered in panic as the two of them were pushed further apart, Castiel falling behind. Their stable, unchanging bed turned upside-down and foreign, tight and disorienting as they were steadily shoved toward the unknown.

His…brother now he supposed, was becoming more and more impossible to soothe. The soft brush of Castiel’s Grace and the gentle nudges of his tiny limbs less effective as they were separated for the first time. 

Castiel disliked his brother’s discomfort, but knew this would pass soon. Most infants found the act of being born rather unpleasant, and Castiel found himself agreeing with his new sibling and wishing it was over.

Another squeezing contraction and the presence that had been so close for the past months slipped away. 

“It’s a boy!” the cry was muffled by the flesh and fluid around him as all sounds outside were. The unfamiliar voice was followed by the joyous laughter of the voices he’d come to know as his new mother and father. Alek and Emily Novak. Castiel was pleased to hear they chose to name his brother James - “We can call him Jimmy for short”. He thought it suited him better than the other names they’d discussed.

Jimmy was mewling in agitation, calling out for Castiel’s familiar presence.

Castiel kicked out and twisted, impatient now to see Jimmy in the open air and have him near again. The close press of him and the beating of his heart as welcome and familiar as Heaven. A curl of Grace timed with the next contraction carried him out in a slick slide.

“Oh my god!” an unfamiliar voice shouted, shockingly loud undiluted as it was. Castiel winced and didn’t wonder why Jimmy was crying. Hands rushed to catch and lift him from the cold surface he’d landed on and cut the cord attaching him to Emily Novak.

“What’s going on?” Emily asked, a worried pitch to her breathless voice. “Was…was that another baby?”

“Another baby? There’s another one?” Alek’s gob smacked face passed in and out of Castiel’s vision as the nurse turned him around and rubbed at him with a clean towel.

The woman looked down at him, surprised eyes beginning to crinkle in a smile at the corners over the paper mask covering her face. She turned tilting her arms so Castiel could see Emily resting on the bed and Alek beside her looking at him with wide, shocked eyes. Jimmy was still whining his displeasure where he rested in his mother’s arms.

“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Novak, you have twin boys.” 

“But he never…how…we only ever saw one.” Emily stuttered faintly. Castiel felt a faint satisfaction at the simple task of hiding himself from a camera.

Alek blinked wide blue eyes at him, then turned to his wife. “What are we going to name him?”

‘Castiel’ He pressed the thought against their minds gently, determined he would be called nothing less than the name his Father had given him for whatever time he was stuck like this. ‘My name is Castiel, I’m an angel of the Lord.’

“Castiel,” Emily said decisively. “We’ll call him Castiel.”

As the doctors and nurses bustled around, Castiel was handed to his new human father. Alek Novak’s arms were warm and sure, cradling his head comfortably. Castiel watched as the man’s face ranged through a strange series of emotions. Shocked, awed; alternately crumpling as though he would cry and pulling into a wide, toothy grin before finally settling on alarm. 

“I only bought one carseat,” Alek said, whipping his head around to look at Emily. The phrase made no sense to Castiel.

“So we’ll get another one,” Emily said laughingly. “Let me see him.”

Alek, his human father, stepped closer and knelt down so his mother could see him. She was smiling in a way Castiel knew humans found beautiful despite the red flush and sweat beading her forehead. Her arms had Jimmy curled against her chest, his legs and arms folded close to his body as he whined uncomfortably and squinted against the too-bright light. 

Castiel met Jimmy’s eyes and the infant quieted with a coo.

Swinging his tiny fists in a circle, Castiel tested their native strength and the way the power of his Grace flowed through them. As Jimmy, his intended vessel, fell asleep Castiel wondered what would happen now. 

He was not fallen. He still had all the Grace and power of an angel, the song of the Host ringing as clearly in his mind as ever. The memories and knowledge of all the eons of his existence were still intact as he looked out from the body of a human newborn.

Castiel flicked his fingers and wove a temporary sigil of blessing and protection around his new human family to hide them from malicious forces as well as his angelic brothers. 

This strange collision of soul and Grace and the human body was not their fault. He would not allow any repercussions to fall on them. It was his own fault that he was so careless to be so gravely injured in battle; his own fault that he’d not paid attention to the state of his true vessel when he threw himself toward it to beg sanctuary. Castiel’s own fault that he failed to noticed the embryonic vessel splitting and creating a second, identical body to accommodate him as he recuperated in the soul-space beside it.

Castiel curled and stretched his toes and felt his eyelids grow heavy, his new body weary from the strain of being birthed.

This was the most bizarre mishap with a vessel he’d ever heard of.


End file.
